Pros too

[ban-all-sheds]

I imagine a lot of us will feel less bad at reading this - redacted for obvious reasons.

An email I received yesterday about one of our locations.

Dear Colleagues

At 16:30hrs this evening we had to make a decision to close @@. The Landlord's team at @@ were working on the main water supply and unfortunately the joints failed causing water to flood the minus 1 carpark area and also causing further flooding to the stairwells. There are critical monitoring rooms situated on this floor including the lift motor room, therefore there was a risk with further issues such as the electrics in the building. Thank you to all of you who left the building promptly when asked.


The Landlord and our @@ team on site have been working all evening to move forward to get the building in operation for tomorrow. However. due to the following reasons we have decided the building will remain closed on Friday 7th June. You will also find some other useful information below:

• Significant work needs to be carried out to clear the stairwells and entrance area from the car park in to our building.
• Humidifiers also need to be brought in to dry out the floor and as you can imagine reduce any smell from this flooding.
• The Lift suppliers will be on site in the morning - the lift shaft has been flooded and as a result they are out of order until assessed and the water has dried out.
• The revolving doors will also need to assessed with the Supplier for any damage.
• Due to the water flow issues this evening, we will have @@ on site to do a check on the water supply.
• @@ will also be on site tomorrow morning to assess the catering area and the vending company also. We will not have catering facilities up and running on time as a result.
• If you do need to access the building to collect critical items you need for your job please do use the front main entrance and Staff will be on site. A reminder you will NOT be able to access the building from the car park underground.
• You will receive a further communication tomorrow advising you on the status - our objective is to get back up and running on Monday with all key facilities on site.
• Security number on site : @@ for any critical issues you may have.
• We will also do a check on the rooms booking database and notify as many people as we can.

 

[SimonH2]

When I was on a BC course some years ago, one of the tales we were told in the "things you probably didn't think about" category was ... how a business park got evacuated for a week due to a phone line fault.

One business on site lost their phones when a truck caught and broke ovehead cables. So BT decided they'd be better underground and started digging - only to hit a water main. Is everyone now thinking about this song ?

So the water company started digging, and hit a gas main. By the time the place was safe, the businesses had been out for a week.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I had a customer once who didn't think they needed flood insurance for their servers as they were on the 10th floor.

Wrong.

 

[SimonH2]

And how often have you seen servers (and sometimes IT - cf The IT Crowd documentary) dumped in the basement/cellar to get them out of sight

 

[bernardgreen]

One large UK city had ( and may still have ) it's emergency flood control room in a "secure" location. A dis-used road tunnel which led to a bridge over the river that was ( is ) the prime source of flood water.

To be fair the tunnel did slope down hill to that entrance which was several feet above expected flood level. The control room floor was probably twenty feet higher.

 

[Bankrupt]

Any Insurance Loss Adjuster will tell you that (as long as nobody gets injured or worse) you're much better off having a fire than a flood.

At least with a fire you clean things up and get on with putting everything right almost straight away - Even if water is used for fire fighting it is a relatively small volume and can be mopped up easily.

If flood water has soaked into the fabric of your building you can be looking at several weeks of drying/dehumidification before you can even think about getting the builders in...

 

[foxhole]

While our office building was being renovated the pumped mains were on a time switch , the builders were working 24/7 to get it ready, opening taps and getting no water the plasterers went home, midnight the miss set time-switch started the mains pumps up and every tap in the building ran at full pressure until morning.Damages included a new laid oak floor on each of the three floors at over £100,000.
This happened twice.
Apparently the building firm went bust, wonder why.

 

[fidom]

I hope someone does not take that literally and order some humidifiers!